Who’s Best For Shipping Supplies? Uline vs. Alternatives

Shipping supplies come in all shapes, sizes, and materials, and a number of online shipping supply dealers carry a wide selection. We looked at the most popular options and rising stars and decided to review Uline, Packaging Supplies, Shipping Supply, and eSupplyStore. These cover the range of options in terms of selection, pricing, shipping, and customer service.

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We chose Uline as the best source for shipping supplies for small businesses because they have the best selection, good base pricing with generous volume discounts, 8 nationwide warehouses to ensure the fastest possible shipping, and highly praised customer service.

Uline has the best selection of shipping supplies, plus carries anything you could possibly need to run a shipping operation and warehouse. Of our 4 contenders, the Uline website was the easiest to use, followed by Shipping Supply and eShipping Store, with Packaging Supplies’ antiquated website taking last place for website ease-of-use.

Of the 4, Uline carries the largest variety of boxes, mailers, envelopes, and fill materials. The Uline website’s “search by dimension” feature makes it very easy to navigate the huge selection and find exactly what you’re looking for. Uline also has the most custom branding options, including labels, retail bags, tissue paper and packing tape that you can special order with your company logo or other branding. This is ideal if you want to create a branded unboxing experience or launch a subscription box company. Of our 4, only Shipping Supply also offers customized labels, but none offers custom-printed shipping boxes.

As far as pricing goes, Uline is neither the cheapest nor most expensive, however, it has 8 nationwide warehouses, so chances are there’s a Uline within 1-2 shipping days from your location. That helps cut down on shipping costs plus speeds up delivery times compared to our other contenders. In fact, most orders arrive in just 1 day to many US locations.

Uline is the only shipping supplies dealer to offer 24/7 customer support, and if you order in volume they assign you a service rep who can negotiate even lower prices for you. In researching reviews of Uline, even those who complained of receiving damaged or incorrect orders spoke highly of the customer service, saying they were personable and helpful, which has been our experience, too.

Shipping Supplies Selection & Product Search

All 4 or our top shipping supplies sources sell boxes, envelopes, bubble mailers, tape, labels, peanuts, bubble wrap, and plenty more. Of the 4, Uline has the best selection, with Shipping Supply being a close runner-up. Both offer many different styles of boxes and packing materials as well as a vast array of warehouse supplies.

Uline: Uline has the best selection of boxes and packing materials, including specialty polyurethane and polyethylene foam, which the others don’t offer. You can find jewelry and apparel boxes, as well as shopping bags and other retail store supplies. You can add custom branding to labels, packing tape, and tissue paper, unlike the other contenders, with the exception of Shipping Supply, which offers custom printed labels only. Uline also sells warehouse equipment, including shelving, scales, tables, and carts.

Of our 4, Uline has the most professional and user-friendly website, hands-down. It’s easy to navigate and has a very useful “search by dimension” feature, shown below:

Just type in the measurements of a box you need and it will pull up all boxes of that size. Along with standard medium and heavyweight boxes, they have lightweight boxes (if you want a more economical option), fold-up mailers, side-loading boxes, insulated boxes and more.

eSupply Store: eSupplyStore covers all the basics as well as warehouse equipment and fixtures. They offer boxes in over 600 dimensions, so if you have to find something very specific, your best bet might be eSupplyStore.

Packaging Supplies: Packaging Supplies covers all the basics: boxes, mailers, supplies and filling materials. While they have many dimensions of boxes, there’s no easy way to sort through them or quickly search for a specific size on their website.

Shipping Supply: Like Uline, Shipping Supply has a wide selection of boxes and shipping supplies as well as warehouse equipment and furnishings and offers a selection of custom labels. It also has a handy “search by dimension” feature, though it’s not as streamlined as Uline’s search.

Shipping Supplies Prices

We compared the prices of our 4 contenders across a variety of common shipping supplies such as padded envelopes, boxes and mailers, and packing materials. There’s no clear cheapest-across-the-board winner when it comes to shipping supplies, so it’s a good idea to price-shop to find the cheapest supplier for your specific needs.

Here’s how our 4 contenders stack up in a price comparison of 5 common shipping supplies.

Uline: Uline is middle of the road on box prices, but they have the cheapest bagged peanuts of our 4.

However, if you buy in volume, Uline offers generous volume discounts and ships from 8 nationwide locations, which can make them the cheapest supplier with the fastest delivery, depending on your needs.

eSupply Store: eSupplyStore’s Prices are on the lower end across the board except for our 14x14x10 box and peanuts, where they are the most expensive of the 4. They do have the cheapest bubble wrap of our 4 contenders.

Packaging Supplies: Packaging Supplies has the lowest box prices out of the gate and very low-cost bubble wrap, bet the second-most-expensive peanuts. Shipping is actual UPS rates which can be significantly higher than others depending on where you’re shipping to. In our test order, it was the second-highest of our 4 and negates their box pricing advantages.

Shipping Supply: Shipping Supply has the highest or nearly the highest prices on all test items except bubble mailers. On these, they are the second-to-cheapest.

Shipping Costs

Shipping costs add up fast with bulky shipping supplies. If you order in small batches, shipping can easily double your costs since these orders ship via UPS or FedEx ground. If you ship regularly, you can save money on shipping supplies over time if you order in bulk to take advantage of freight discounts vs regular ground shipping.

Uline: Uline has 8 nationwide locations so most deliveries take just 1-2 days to arrive. Plus, having that many locations makes its shipping the cheapest in our side-by-side comparison.

eSupply Store: eSupplyStore’s real-time rates came back with the priciest shipping on our test order. It’s located in Nebraska, so if you’re there or in a surrounding state, your shipping would be cheaper and faster.

Packaging Supplies: Packaging Supplies has the second-costliest shipping of our 4 contenders. Packaging Supplies also has several locations nationwide to cut down on shipping time and costs but didn’t beat Uline.

Shipping Supply: Shipping Supply is based in Wisconsin, but still had cheaper shipping rates than either eSupplyStore or Packaging Supplies, which have warehouses closer to our location. They still don’t beat Uline.

Order Returns

Everything with Uline is easy, including returns. All 4 contenders accept returns, but you will pay the return shipping unless they made a shipping error on your order. Because shipping supplies can be rather bulky, returns can cost more than your actual order, so keep that in mind when considering a return.

Uline: Returns are accepted within 30 days for full refund. RMA required.

eSupply Store: Returns are accepted within 30 days for full refund. RMA required. Returns not accepted for special Free Shipping promo items.

The Bottom Line

Between the wide selection, sleek website and praised customer service, we feel you’re likely to have the best shopping experience on Uline for packaging supplies. The cheaper and faster shipping options are the icing on the cake. But, if you need specific products, you can find cheaper shipping supplies with different suppliers, so always price-shop for your specific needs.

Plus, if you’re geographically close to one versus the others, actual shipping rates can make them the cheapest option.

Where do you get your shipping supplies from? Uline or another supplier? We’d love to hear who works best for you in the comments below.

About the Author

Krista Fabregas is a staff writer at Fit Small Business and editor of the Ecommerce Section. Krista launched her first ecommerce site in 2001, and soon grew to operate two niche B2B and B2C sites, a 10K square foot warehouse, and staff of nine. Combined, her sites sold more than $1.5M annually for several years. Krista now shares her hands-on experience with others looking to expand into online sales. When not helping small business owners launch and grow efficient ecommerce operations, Krista enjoys writing fiction and nonfiction and riding horses and motorcycles in her hometown of Houston.

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Comments (34)Disclaimer: Reviews on FitSmallBusiness.com are the product of independent research by our writers, researchers, and editorial team. User reviews and comments are contributions from independent users not affiliated with FitSmallBusiness.com's editorial team. Banks, issuers, credit card companies, and other product & service providers are not responsible for any content posted on FitSmallBusiness.com. As such, they do not endorse or guarantee any posted comments or reviews.Post Your Comment

I have worked with a number of companies for boxes online. I find Uline is STILL the go-to place for pre-made boxes at small quantities. If you’re ordering 1000+ boxes, it makes sense to start looking into custom printed or custom boxes altogether, since your price per unit will end up being very similar to what Uline is offering. Through my experience and research online I found only 2 companies that offer good value from North America. One is Pakfactory.com – if you’re looking for fully custom made boxes (you can do embossing, hot stamping, you name it!). The other is Packlane.com for great prices on the 3 box styles they carry (corrugated shipping box). Their website is just bomb for trying out designs. Pakfactory on the other hand goes with a different approach and offers the best service I’ve seen from a packaging company online. Anyway that’s my 2 cents.

The Custom boxes are one of the best online packaging and printing company in the USA. We have a large variety of unique and creative boxes custom design and templates. Our boxes are available in every shape, size, and style you want. Try us now; we have a team of fully professional designers, that can make your product a new look as per your requirements. Free shipping and designing service available for all our clients.

I agree with the first comment. I will never use Uline. I looked into them so many times and they are really high in price…maybe not to the other companies you compared, but there are so many better options out there. If you are just starting out, go with Amazon or eBay for supplies. I want everything for free lol, so if I’m telling you to go that route, trust me. It’s aggravating enough trying to work your business and learn new things. Don’t waste your money. Good Luck to all of you. Don’t get discouraged. Just push through it and everything will fall into place.

Our company needed less then $150 worth of mailing supplies per year and Uline was our go to supply store for years. I drive past their warehouse on a monthly basis so it was convenient to stop by once a year for supplies. Since they started charging a $25 fee for store pick up I do not use them. I have now teamed up with a few other small business so we are able to make larger purchases for better pricing. We all consider Uline not to be small business friendly because of the pickup charge and have found other suppliers who appreciate our business.

At Associated Bag, we’ve earned a fair amount of business from local shops that do not want to pay for picking up orders at Uline. We have distribution centers across the country, and our Milwaukee location is close to Uline’s new Wisconsin HQ. In addition to free local pickup of shipping, packaging and workplace supplies, we are also know for providing free test samples of most of the items we carry, working with our customers on a wide range of custom products, and an industry leading 365-day return policy. Many of the comments posted on our website, associatedbag.com, come from small businesses who say that we treat them like they are our only customer. If you’d be interested in that kind of service, give us a call at 800-926-6100. Thank you.

I am a small family owned packaging distributor in Dallas, Texas. I would suggest using a small packaging distributor in your area because they understand small business. I offer free customer pick up on all orders which Uline does not and offer free shipping on orders over $499. While I maintain competitive pricing to my customers. I may not be able to compete on a larger scale, but for small business in my area, we are the best solution. I bet small businesses can find this in there region of the country as well. We just don’t have the big advertising budgets of this big companies. I do believe that small should support small business.

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